The earliest corsets
were called "payre of bodies" and were usually worn with a farthingale that
held out the skirts in a stiff cone. The payre of bodies, later called stays,
turned the upper torso into a matching cone or cylinder. They had shoulder
straps and ended in flaps at the waist. They flattened the bust, and in so
doing, pushed the breasts up. The emphasis of the stays was less on the
smallness of the waist than on the contrast between the rigid flatness of the
bodice front and the curving tops of the breasts peeking over the top of the
corset.
Henry III of France and the Princess Margaret of Lorraine
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Stays became much less
constricting with the advent of the high-waisted empire style (around 1796)
which de-emphasized the natural waist, and so made body-shaping to achieve a
narrow waist unnecessary. Some form of stays was still worn by most women
(except during the extremes of the late 1790's Parisian high Greek look), but
these were often "short stays" (i.e. which did not extend very far below the
breasts), and/or without boning, and/or front-fastening. By contrast, corsets
intended to exert serious body-shaping force (as in the Victorian era) were
"long" (extending down to and beyond the natural waist), laced in back, and
stiffened with boning.
Regency short stays circa 1810
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When the waistline
returned to its natural position during the 1830s, the corset reappeared.
However, it had changed its shape to the hourglass silhouette that is even now
considered typical both for corsets and for Victorian fashion. At the same
time, the term corset was first used for this garment in English. In the
1830s, the artificially inflated shoulders and skirts made the intervening
waist look narrow, even with the corset laced only moderately.
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When the exaggerated
shoulders disappeared, the waist itself had to be cinched tightly in order to
achieve the same effect. It is in the 1840s and 1850s that tightlacing is
first recorded. It was ordinary fashion taken to an extreme. The Victorian and
Edwardian corset differed from the earlier stays in numerous ways. The corset
no longer ended at the waist, but flared out and ended several inches below
the waist. The corset was exaggeratedly curvaceous rather than funnel-shaped.
Spiral steel stays curved with the figure. While many corsets were still sewn
by hand to the wearer's measurements, there was also a thriving market in
cheaper mass-produced corsets.
1859 corset with built-in partial crinoline
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1869 corset 1878
Corset 1890 Corset
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The straight-front
corset, also known as the swan-bill corset and the S-bend corset, was worn
from ca. 1900 to the early 1910s. Its name is derived from the very rigid,
straight busk inserted in the center front of the corset. This corset forced
the torso forward and made the hips protrude.
Camille Clifford in an S-curve corset
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Straight-front corset from 1911
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The straight-front
corset was popularised by Inez Gaches-Sarraute, a corsetiere with a degree in
medicine. It was intended to be less injurious to wearers' health than other
corsets in that it exerted less pressure on the stomach area. However, any
benefits to the stomach were more than counterbalanced by the unnatural
posture that it forced upon its wearer.
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After about 1908, the
small corseted waist slowly started to fall out of fashion. The feminist and
dress reform movements had made practical clothing acceptable for work or
exercise. The rise of the Artistic Dress movement made loose clothing and the
natural waist fashionable even for evening wear. Couturiers like Fortuny and
Poiret designed exotic, alluring costumes in pleated or draped silks,
calculated to reveal slim, youthful bodies. If one didn't have such a body,
new undergarments, the brassiere and the girdle, promised to give the illusion
of one.
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